Category: Semiotics

It is 2018 and every single tabloid is publishing and republishing a confession of the chief editor of National Geographic that the coverage of the magazine in the past was racist. Right. We know it. Yes, in the United State and many other parts of the world, people of different ethnic groups have been misrepresented…

In his seminal essay, Critique of the Image, the renowned semiotician, Umberto Eco, proposes a clear taxonomy of codes used to interpret an image in the semiotic tradition. He differentiates between the following types of codes (the text below closely follows Eco’s original formulations) : 1) Perceptive codes, which for Eco are establishing the conditions…

The opening paragraphs of Eugenie Shinkle’s book ‘Fashion as Photograph’ assert that ‘photographic images play a key role in defining global fashion culture and in charting its discursive space. They are seen by many as the driving force behind the fashion system, with cultural pundits and industry creatives heralding the photograph as fashion’s ‘ultimate signifier’…

Visible Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics in the Visual Arts is a useful overview of the semiotic theories by Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco that introduce this thinking to the visual arts professionals. De Saussure’s Model for a Sign is composed of the two fundamental elements, the ‘signifier’ and the ‘signified’. A…